Gresham College and the formation of the Royal Society

Both the location and the staff of London's Gresham College, a foundation outside the old universities at which lectures were given for the general public, played significant roles in the events leading up to the charter given to the Royal Society.

Of those, two were based at Gresham College: the so-called 1645 group concerned with experimental science; and the 1660 committee of 12 who steered the early days in which the Royal Society was formed, i.e. in the period October 1660 to 1662.

[1]The traditional account, represented by the Royal Society's handbook from a century ago,[2] which took at face value some of Thomas Sprat and John Wallis's statements about the pre-history, is more cut-and-dried than current views about the central role of the "Gresham College group".

Meetings at Jonathan Goddard's lodgings which were in Wood Street, or Cheapside, may have preceded the 1645 Gresham College gatherings, or may have been concurrent; an account of John Wallis asserts there was a group convened by Theodore Haak.

[5] The first version (A Defence of the Royal Society) was produced to contradict William Holder, with whom Wallis was in dispute over his work in speech therapy.

[8] Margery Purver has argued that Sprat's History is more reliable for the purposes of the Royal Society, their reading of Francis Bacon's thought, and the intention to develop science according to a taxonomic approach.

While the traditional account, from Thomas Birch in the eighteenth century, identified the 1645 Gresham group with the "invisible college" mentioned in correspondence of the young Robert Boyle from 1646 and 1647, this is now generally doubted.

Apart from Boyle himself, the only figure identifiable with the "invisible college" (under this description) to have played a leading part later in the Royal Society is William Petty.

It brought together natural philosophers without regard to political distinctions, and recruited a number of key figures for the future Royal Society.

As listed on the Gresham College website, their holders were as follows:[10] When in 1659 William Croone took over the chair of rhetoric, he therefore joined Wren (astronomy), Rooke (mathematics), Petty (music), and Goddard (physic), making five of the seven professors men who would be significant figures in the future Royal Society.